


Alchemy Notes

by garamonder



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist (Anime 2003), Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Action/Adventure, Drabble Collection, Drama, Family, Friendship, Gen, General, Humor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-16
Updated: 2018-11-16
Packaged: 2019-08-24 14:31:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,387
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16642002
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/garamonder/pseuds/garamonder
Summary: A collection of short stories set during various points in Fullmetal Alchemist, ranging from missing scenes to speculative moments. Features many characters, with Ed prominent.





	Alchemy Notes

**Pop!**

.

Ed was squeaking.

It got progressively worse as the day went on. Ed’s red ears and neck betrayed his mortification and once he figured out which gear was the culprit he did his best to move the arm without its use. He obviously had forgotten his oil and Al, wringing his massive hands together, had none to give him.

Stuck in the office for now, the major went about the day with a thinned mouth warning against literally any mention of the persistent squeak of automail. No one was inclined to mention it anyway. They wouldn’t admit it but it kind of upset them how embarrassed he was.

Havoc was digging around for a cigarette when his fingers closed around a pack of gum he’d bought in a moment of delusion to reduce his smoking habit. He thought, then took out a stick of the minty gum and chewed it for a minute before blowing a massive bubble–and POPPED it with a shock of sound that made the entire office jump.

He snickered. “Edgy?” he said, and did it again. Hawkeye rolled her eyes but went back to her work with a slight smile. Havoc chewed the gum obnoxiously as he read reports that made his eyes glaze over. Before long the continued popping had sparked the familiar vein in the colonel’s forehead.

“Havoc, it’s actually less annoying when you’re smoking in here,” he snapped from his desk.

“So I’ll smoke.”

“You will not,” said Hawkeye.

“So I’ll chew my gum.”

“You will not,” said Mustang.

Havoc winked at Edward, who seemed to perk up at the colonel’s irritation. “Gum?” he offered, and Ed took a piece with suppressed glee, not even noticing that his automail squeaked as he reached for it.

“Do not pop that gum,” Mustang said.

Ed and Havoc stared him in the eye as they started to blow identical bubbles.

“I swear to God I’ll court martial you both.”

POP

(and that is how they lost their military pension.)

.

**Babysitting**

**.**

“It’s a recipe for a chemical fiasco!” Ed insisted, throwing out his hands for emphasis. “The two elements don’t _work_ together!”

“Brother,” said Al patiently, “It’s Elicia’s tea party and her stuffed animals can sit wherever they want. They’re guests.”

Elicia poured some tea into a flowery cup, then looked up at Ed with a mischievous smile. “Lady Lion and Mr Deer are girlfriend-boyfriend now,” she told him primly, a development Ed was positive had just occurred to spite him.

He crossed his arms and waited for his scone. “Fine, but don’t blame me when the stuffing flies.”

.

**Haircut**

 . 

“You’ll look like your father,” murmured Trisha, running her fingers through her older son’s hair. He frowned through the bangs she’d swept over his eyes, and she gently squared his head and went on clipping. Ed’s hair got so unruly, so fast, while Alphonse’s settled naturally into the neat, trim lines that suited him so well.

Van Hohenheim had left the year before and Edward had not forgiven him. Despite Trisha’s assurances to the contrary, Ed had never ceased to take his departure as a slight against his mother and brother, and every day his father was gone was another added insult to injury.

“Can you make it shorter?” he said sourly.

Trisha knew he only asked because she had told him he’d look like his father and his father’s hair was long. She smiled, and brushed the bangs into place. “Oh, but Ed, I love your hair. It’s so pretty. Can’t you keep it a _little_ long, for me?”

Warring priorities briefly made Ed pause. He loved his mother more than he resented his father, for he shrugged and made no protest as she put down the clippers.

“So handsome,” she said proudly, brushing away some stray hairs from his cheek. Ed’s grudging indulgence turned to a tiny, genuine smile. “Don’t cut it _too_ often.”

So he didn’t, not even after she had died and not even when Hohenheim had dared to name it imitation. Ed loved his mother better.

.

**The Principle of the Thing**

.

However much he swore he wouldn’t get sucked into them, something about carnival games always got Ed’s blood up and he could reliably be found at a stall, hours later, swearing a blue streak as an increasingly nervous-looking attendant handed him three more rings in response to cenz slapped down so hard the counter rattled.

“Brother, we don’t even need a stuffed lion,” Al said gently as his brother snarled for another round. He hoped this folly wasn’t coming out of Ed’s travel expenses.

“It,” growled Ed, “is the _principal_ of the thing.” He said that every time. “I know this is rigged!” He pointed an accusing finger at the booth attendant, who looked suddenly smug.

Ed had developed a weakness early on for the fickle carnival games. Every time he worked up a lather of righteous indignation at alleged trickery, which was often untrue and had become something of a prejudice.

“Any complaints about game conduct can be addressed to the director…” the attendant droned with obvious practice. Ed slammed another several cenz onto the counter.

“One more round!” he barked.

Alphonse wondered how much stubborn pride accounted for the money in the carnival’s coffers.

Ed snatched the rings and rattled off another indignant and somewhat profane tirade that almost masked the telltale chime Al had been expecting for about thirty seconds now.

“This one’s for all the suckers you’ve fleeced,” Ed warned. The attendant yawned theatrically.

This time, Ed’s rings caught the cones perfectly and settled midway down with a satisfying clank. He whooped as the gamekeeper’s jaw dropped, and took an obnoxiously long time choosing his prize from the wall. Finally he let Al select a large stuffed cat that Al privately figured he’d donate at the earliest chance. Maybe he’d save it for Elicia Hughes.

“You sure showed him,” he said to Ed as they trooped through rows of colorful stalls.

Ed didn’t dignify him with a response. He carried a bouquet of cotton candy as big as his head and seemed to be pondering how he might unhinge his jaw for the first bite.

.

**The Eye of Briggs**

_._

Here in the North, the only resources in abundance were ice and a lack of supervision. The cautious eye of the Briggs wall was most often trained on Drachma, and rarely turned inward on Amestrian citizens who made ends meet by many means. It was a hard land, this frozen place.

And so when Dr Kjell looked up to see the shadows of two hulking men supporting a smaller third in his doorway, he knew better than to ask questions that only invited silence or a lie and simply hurried them to a table in his clinic. The part of his brain that noted the tattered military uniforms was quickly shushed by the part that sequestered observation to the purely medical.

The lad they deposited on the table was on the fringe of consciousness. His head lolled as they laid him out and Dr Kjell’s professional eye instantly wrote the boy off. A massive hole gaped in his coat, where ice was already encroaching on the skin and crystallizing the blood. Were it not a lost cause he would have scolded them for leaving the wound exposed.

But when he dutifully cut away the red coat and layers beneath, he was shocked to find the wound had been sealed. “How?” he trailed, and the men shrugged.

It was tricky business to extricate shreds of fabric from where they’d frozen against the injury. However it had been sealed, the effort was at best a temporary measure. Blood was beginning to pour anew from the fissure which he now saw was mirrored on the boy’s back. He’d been impaled, speared like a fish in the icy Northern rivers.

He settled the patient on his side, the boy’s flank heaving like a dying animal, and went to work.

Days later the very alive teenager, carrying one less kidney than he’d arrived with, gazed at him with disconcerting yellow eyes–no less clear for the pain–and thanked Kjell for the “patch job,” as the boy called it dryly. The three men were leaving very much against the doctor’s advice, but they were not the first and in this place, were likely not the last.

Dr Kjell watched them go. He’d never asked their names, but learned them weeks later when he saw the boy’s face again on a wanted poster.

.

**Silence**

. 

Silence fell on the other end of the line, so profoundly someone else might have thought they’d become disconnected. Pinako knew better. She waited.

At last Edward said, “Did he say anything? Leave anything?”

It was never in Pinako to lie, nor in Ed to be lied to. “No. I’m sorry. I didn’t even know he was here until I went to the grave.”

Edward would know she’d have checked Hohenheim’s pockets for any notes. For a man of letters, he’d died without a single one on him.

“He was never one for goodbyes,” said Pinako. It was all she could offer the boy, who at this moment would be standing in a crowded hospital wing, not far from his brother’s door, while she told him their father had died.

Briefly she heard some nurse in the background giving instructions to an unseen stranger. She was probably more aware of Edward’s surroundings just then than he was.

“Not even for Al?” he said, incredulity creeping into his voice.

If Pinako could have cried again, she might have done then. Most of her tears had been shed long ago for her son and his wife; she had been surprised she’d had any left to spare when she had found Hohenheim before Trisha’s grave.

“I’m sorry, Edward,” she said.

Then, a moment later, she added: “We’ll bury him the day after tomorrow.”

She didn’t have to say she’d deliberately allowed time for Edward to come home for the burial. Alphonse was still far too weak, taking his first steps at the beginning of a long road toward recovery. If Edward so chose, he could be in Resembool the next day.

Edward said, “I’m staying with Alphonse.”

Pinako had expected nothing else, and nodded to herself. “I’ll take care of things here,” she said.

“Thanks.” His voice was tight and she could picture the white-knuckled grip he held on the receiver, and the bared teeth through which he said: “I’ll send money.”

“Keep your money,” she told him, and refused his objections. They spoke a minute more before saying their goodbyes.

Pinako knew Ed would go and tell his brother the news, more kindly than he felt it deserved. Alphonse would cry for Hoheinheim, and Ed might cry for Alphonse. It was hard to know them so well.

She replaced the receiver and went to tell Winry to call for the gravedigger. They’d bury Hohenheim themselves, and Den would carry the flowers for his grave.

.

**The Gate Moves**

.

It was late when Edward returned from the fields where he’d been lending old Wren Lyatt a hand with his sheep. The house was quiet, its other dwellers having gone to bed. Winry’s clean workbench bore no evidence of rush orders, and Ed felt strangely peaceful as he found a rare moment to himself and ate the covered food Granny had left out for him on the kitchen table. He could hear crickets outside the windows.

After Ed washed up, he threw a towel over his shoulder and tiptoed around the creaky floorboards in the dark hall, feeling like he’d earned a lie-in the next morning.

He crossed the threshold into his bedroom and stopped short.

Had the crickets stopped suddenly, or were they beyond his notice? Ed could hear nothing but the pounding of blood in his head. He froze in the doorway, staring.

A moment later he jerked his head at the door frame in old reflex.

“It’s not a Gate,” said the mocking figure before him.

It regarded the alchemist a moment longer, then continued: “You tore it down, remember? You left it in ruins as surely as you did the house that once stood on that hill. You don’t intend to do the same to _this_ one, I hope.”

Ed found his voice. “Then how are you here?”

“It would seem,” drawled Truth, “that I have been dispossessed of my home. Despite your poor track record with them, it was only fair I come to yours.”

.

**Wanted**

.

They stared baldly at the paper sign, which was tacked on a wall outside a butcher’s shop. It seemed an inauspicious place for a wanted poster, and the kid seemed to resent it. The fugitive life held few glamors.

He leaned forward until he was practically nose-to-nose with the image in the center of the poster, his expression a perfect mirror of its scowling face. Darius had to fight a grin.

“That looks nothing like me,” Ed eventually hissed.

Heinkel peered at the poster. “That’s a photograph.”

“Well, it’s a year old. I’m _way_ taller now.”

“Why the bitchface?” Darius tapped the photo. “You’re glaring like the photographer cut a fart.”

In truth, he’d been glowering because Armstrong had hauled him out of the library by his collar to take the stupid yearly photograph for his military record, and had insisted on modeling the perfect pose for him to emulate in the photographer’s office. Shirtlessly, of course.

Thinking about that now, Ed felt strangely glum. He wondered if he’d ever see the oppressive major again. Beneath his over-oiled muscles, Armstrong had a soft heart that would not survive another Ishval. He was almost as likely as Ed to be shot by a military firing squad before the year was out.

“Come on,” said Heinkel gruffly. “Let’s move on before someone gets it into their head you look familiar.”

If someone got that into their head in these parts, there seemed a good chance someone else might take it out. No one missed the words that had been scrawled over the official statement.

Where the poster should have read, “If seen, contact nearest military outpost,” the words were crossed out in an angry black line.

In its place was written in bold letters: “If seen, give directions to the Führer.”

.

**Author's Note:**

> I am working on updating The Last Route but figured I'd post the drabbles I've been writing periodically on Tumblr here as well. I'll update this as a batch of new ones comes up.


End file.
